Creating Frames: Contemporary Indigenous Theatre

Abstract

This is the introduction to Creating Frames: Contemporary Indigenous Theatre 1967-97 by Maryrose Casey. Since the late 1960s there have been hundreds of contemporary theatre productions of dozens of scripts by artists who identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Through official policies from apartheid through assimilation to multiculturalism and thence into the highly politicised 1990s in the wake of Mabo, Deaths in Custody Report, and the Bringing Them Home Report, Indigenous Australian theatre artists have created dynamic ways to tell their stories on Australian stages. This book is the first social and cultural history of the theatre created by Indigenous Australian artists. Based on interviews with practitioners including Bob Maza, Jack Charles, Gary Foley, Justine Saunders, Wesley Enoch and John Harding and archival research, the book tells the story of Indigenous Australians producing theatre in the twentieth century. From isolated attempts to achieve production in the 1960s through the development of Indigenous companies in the 1970s to the establishment of Indigenous playwrights as important contributors to theatre on national and international stages in the 1980s and 1990s. The story tells the story behind the creation of a substantial body of work that has made a major contribution to Australian theatre and played an important role in ensuring that indigenous voices are heard.